Scotland’s national tourist board has always looked for ways to grab the attention of Londoners. So most visitscotland posters end up on the London underground. This particular example simply took that idea and supersized it. In fact for a while this poster held the Guinness book of records title as world’s biggest poster. It ran the entire length of a platform in Bank underground station. Called ‘perfect day’ it took the tube traveller on a much nicer journey than the one they were about to embark on, stopping off at “wee snuggle” “A dram” and arriving at “count the stars.” It was a nightmare to shoot (one 280 degree shot) and a bigger nightmare to print and put up. But we got praise from the client, Londoners and the World’s press. A perfect end to a perfect day.

When the government decided to privatise the Royal Mail the CWU turned to us to help them fight it. You’ll find work we did in the campaign across both our posters and our press work. It was a huge campaign with many different messages targeting different audiences but like all good creative work it looks, feels and sounds like one big campaign. In this case the big idea that held the work together was the humble yet iconic stamp. As you can see it gave us lots of opportunities to make our point to the Great British people and the Government of the day. We’re proud that this campaign helped the CWU win the day too.

At least until the next Government came to power.

When we were asked to do a campaign for Quantum recruitment the brief was “do an idea for a mug or something.” We thought we could do a bit better than that. Having been both employees and employers we thought it was funny that recruitment companies are often talking to both sides at the same time. So we decided to take that thought and play with it. The result was a campaign (these DM pieces unfolded into huge posters) where both employers and employees in the same company received the work on the same day, to display around the office. It was a fun way to get our client’s name in the workplace. It also got our name into a lot of awards annuals.

“What” we wondered did Scotland’s largest hairdressing chain “do with all that hair?” That set us off thinking. And we decided maybe we should put it to good use….and that’s what you see here. A poster campaign where each and every poster is made of real hair. Real hair swept up after the very talented handiwork of all those stylists. Real hair that we carted off to the printers and threw onto templates and (some very sticky glue). The result is inch thick imagery and typography made from the leftovers of a lot of happy customers. And for a very small spend we got our client many thousands of pounds of free press coverage.

Posters

Probably the first medium to apply the advertising skills that good creatives still apply today. Keep it short, make it memorable. And remember often people only seem posters whizzing past at 30mph so work really hard to get your point over, fast. Creatives are (were?) often taught to answer every brief as a poster first even if that isn’t the chosen medium you’re trying to do the work for. Why? Because if you can sum the idea up in a poster you can maker it work in any medium.

Anyway enough of the history lesson. Just take a look at a few of the thousands of posters we’ve done. Of course they’re award winners (what you didn’t think we’d show you one’s that weren’t did you?).